I don't believe I've ever been happier to see the snow melt than I have this year. I usually like deep snow because I can ski and enjoy a few days or weeks of being a couch potato in the house. Thanks to the pandemic, I've greatly improved my couch potato performance rating this year and even a few glorious days of skiing could not outweigh my feelings of being trapped.
I've been working a few more hours a week at my job recently - and that's causing me to be a bit frazzled. Case in point: I kept my kid at home on a Tuesday for a Thursday virtual doctor's appointment to get his referrals for PT and speech renewed for another year. I didn't realize my mistake until it was far too late for me to take my son to school - so I loaded him up with his facemask and we went to a local botanical garden. I used to volunteer there for years before I moved out to the country and I remembered that the indoor garden had plenty of butterflies in the month prior to their spring "Butterflies are Blooming!" event. Personally, I found the amount of butterflies released during the event proper to be too much; there were so many butterflies that the butterflies would form swarms.
I enjoyed the butterflies; Spawn adored the many, many pieces of heavy equipment present for the ever ongoing construction. He even found a 2 foot gap caused by a snow bank in the construction fence and was dead set of going to join the "stuction workers and firemen". I told him no because he would need a hard hat, safety goggles, a hi-vis vest and steel-toed boots - and they do not make steel toed boots in little kid size 9.
Spawn's fairly calm acceptance of a mild disappointment and chipper greeting of construction workers - "Hi, stuction workers! Good job! Do great job!" - makes me feel like I'm raising my child in accordance with our worldviews. We don't always get what we want in life - but try to enjoy what we have. Be respectful of others and give plenty of praise to people.
Meanwhile, I'm slogging through Geoffrey Botkin's rambling monologue on how to raise children in "What If My Husband Dies?" and wondering what planet he lives on. For example, he seems to steal Steven Maxwell's spiel about departing from the dangers of corporate life, then makes it better by doing when his sons were young:
Honestly, I have no idea how Botkin has earned enough money to raise a large family - but I've never seen or heard anything that he's connected with that sounds remotely like a for-profit large business. He's always been attached to cultic ministries like The Great Commission or Vision Forum. My assumption was that he was erudite enough to earn a stipend or a salary for his writings and speeches and that Victoria picked up the slack by drumming up a very loyal following for her homeschooling materials.
Assuming that Vision Forum was at least part of the business that he's talking about, I find his total lack of regret ironic. He sold the rights to his daughters' more popular book "So Much More" to Vision Forum which means Anna Sofia and Elizabeth lost both the revenue stream available to most self-published stay-at-home daughters through book sales. At the same time, Vision Forum was being run by Doug Phillips who was accused of molesting the teenage nanny his family used. Even if Anna Sofia and Elizabeth were not directly hurt by Doug Phillips, having a friend be sexually assaulted by your dad's boss is traumatic.
It's also exceptionally unusual to be that screwed over by an employer - so maybe think about getting a corporate job rather than joining cult.
Assuming that Vision Forum was at least part of the business that he's talking about, I find his total lack of regret ironic. He sold the rights to his daughters' more popular book "So Much More" to Vision Forum which means Anna Sofia and Elizabeth lost both the revenue stream available to most self-published stay-at-home daughters through book sales. At the same time, Vision Forum was being run by Doug Phillips who was accused of molesting the teenage nanny his family used. Even if Anna Sofia and Elizabeth were not directly hurt by Doug Phillips, having a friend be sexually assaulted by your dad's boss is traumatic.
It's also exceptionally unusual to be that screwed over by an employer - so maybe think about getting a corporate job rather than joining cult.
Yup - because most extremely sheltered homeschooling families found in Christian Patriarchy/Quiverful (CP/QF) are going to just give their son over to the first adult male who offers to teach him something.....
Actually, I take that back. CP/QF society seems to attract a disturbingly high number of control freaks who use the mantle of male headship to disguise abusive behaviors towards family members or members of their community while benefiting from the community's refusal to think bad of their own.
Actually, I take that back. CP/QF society seems to attract a disturbingly high number of control freaks who use the mantle of male headship to disguise abusive behaviors towards family members or members of their community while benefiting from the community's refusal to think bad of their own.
Check out any potential apprentice masters carefully. Ask to speak to some former employees or apprentices. Ask around to make sure they have a good name in the community. I can think of a few people in my community who run very successful businesses but who have used business practices that I find sketchy; I'd not want my son working with them until he was a legal adult and showed he had a good head on his shoulders.
Every time Botkin says the word "business", I hear Sam Eagle's character from "Muppet Treasure Island" lecturing young Scrooge about being a man of "BUSINESS!" Literally every time.
Look, most kids are raised by parents who are employees or business owners who don't need their kids underfoot at their job. Those kids still pick up work ethic and values because little humans pick up plenty of lessons from day-to-day life. Does a family value hard work? Do they reward their kids when their kids work hard? Odds are that the kids will learn to work hard - even if they learn it by volunteering with a secular group to clean up a woodland.
Then - without any transition - Botkin drops this whopper on us:
Really?
Describe, in as much detail as possible, the business you started when your sons were small, Botkin.
How many hours a week did you work at that alleged self-employment and how much income did you earn weekly, monthly, and yearly?
Next, explain in as much detail as possible, how your wife Victoria would have been able to take up working that many hours a week while still providing care and homeschooling for your seven minor children.
How much extra money would she have to expend in increased clothing needs for her, processed food in lieu of cooking from scratch and childcare costs in the first year after your death?
How would the business support those costs in the immediate aftermath when the owner of the business up-and-died?
Exactly.
At least Botkin was honest enough to use the conditional tense of "may prove". He knows well enough that most family businesses don't clear expenses let alone provide enough income for the family - but that's not the line that he wants to sell.
Don't ask Botkin for advice.
Look, most kids are raised by parents who are employees or business owners who don't need their kids underfoot at their job. Those kids still pick up work ethic and values because little humans pick up plenty of lessons from day-to-day life. Does a family value hard work? Do they reward their kids when their kids work hard? Odds are that the kids will learn to work hard - even if they learn it by volunteering with a secular group to clean up a woodland.
Then - without any transition - Botkin drops this whopper on us:
Really?
Describe, in as much detail as possible, the business you started when your sons were small, Botkin.
How many hours a week did you work at that alleged self-employment and how much income did you earn weekly, monthly, and yearly?
Next, explain in as much detail as possible, how your wife Victoria would have been able to take up working that many hours a week while still providing care and homeschooling for your seven minor children.
How much extra money would she have to expend in increased clothing needs for her, processed food in lieu of cooking from scratch and childcare costs in the first year after your death?
How would the business support those costs in the immediate aftermath when the owner of the business up-and-died?
Exactly.
At least Botkin was honest enough to use the conditional tense of "may prove". He knows well enough that most family businesses don't clear expenses let alone provide enough income for the family - but that's not the line that he wants to sell.
Don't ask Botkin for advice.
"Don't ask Botkin for advice"
ReplyDeleteEvergreen theme :)
:-)
DeleteNo idea his video was this long! That poor mother..
ReplyDeleteIt goes on forever - and has no real rhyme or reason in it.
DeleteIt actually feels creepy to me the way he talks about mentoring young boys. It just does.
ReplyDeleteAlso... he seems completely obsessed with boys being hard-working. Why is this the main virtue? As long as they're responsible and kind and empathetic, who cares whether they dig post holes and feed cattle and muck stalls 16 hours a day?
Personally, I doubt he's ever mentored anyone. Mainly because that takes a skill set to mentor in and some level of hard work - and Botkin has neither. He also seems in those parts to be talking about something he's never done - like a childless busybody who tells you how their imaginary children would be better behaved than yours - than talking about something he has experience with.
DeleteI like hard work as a virtue. I really do - but the reason Botkin is obsessed with it is that's the catchphrase that both VF and ATI used to explain how their undereducated male sons were going to make it in the employment world. The boys would have virtues that the employers had never seen before - like being hardworking - and because they were so hardworking - their employers would do whatever training the boys needed!
That story isn't entirely wrong. If you start in a low-enough level job with high-turn over, being diligent and hardworking is often enough to get the attention of bosses to be on a list for people to move up. The unspoken bit, however, is that the process will be much slower than someone who starts at the same level but has a degree. At my job, it's not uncommon for someone to start as a retail associate and work their way up to being a store manager with excellent pay in a decade - but those people almost always have a college degree. People without a degree take nearly a decade longer -and that's a lot of lost wages.
That's also ignoring a lot of jobs that are not available without a college degree.
yes... AND.... honestly, not everywhere can you work your way up without a degree. In a lot of types of companies an MBA is your starter if you want to move up.
DeleteSome of it (and you know this, since you have a master's) is just understanding the broader playing field you're in, and if you only have experience moving up within one company your understanding is silo'd. Outside the box thinking is harder when there's only one experience you've been exposed to your whole life.
So I don't have a master's - I was in a program when Spawn was born and that's been sidelined for the forseeable future. Currently, I'm not planning on finishing it mainly because the market has changed markedly so it would be easier and more lucrative to return to HS teaching compared to adjunct teaching at the college level. If I return to HS teaching and find myself in a district I like, that would be a good time to finish a master's to max out my earning potential.
DeleteBut even as I wrote that, I realized that was just proving your point. Knowing how to read a labor market and adjust your educational plans accordingly is not taught in CP/QF culture - but it's a critical skill for most people to find and advance in employment.